


The Stars At Night Are Big And Bright

by fujiidom



Category: The Big Bang Theory (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Football, Cool Grandmas, Cowboys Suck, Daddy Issues, F/M, Feminist Themes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-18
Updated: 2014-02-18
Packaged: 2018-01-12 22:16:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,619
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1202521
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fujiidom/pseuds/fujiidom
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Playing the field doesn't always require a uniform. Well, not the one you're thinking.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Stars At Night Are Big And Bright

**Author's Note:**

  * For [betternovembers](https://archiveofourown.org/users/betternovembers/gifts).



> HAPPY BELATED BIRTHDAY, [MEG](http://archiveofourown.org/users/betternovembers)! I started this a few days ago, but got oddly caught up in the dynamic. Penny is just too cool for me to knock out in a night's work. Hopefully you enjoy this even though it's a frazzled mess. ♫ _I put my thing down, flip it and reverse it!_ ♫ Enjoy the total reverse of what I wrote you before, I hope it doesn't seem repetitive, I tried to make it its own!

The thing people always asked about a whirlwind romance, “Was it love at first sight?” That thing. It was the opposite of that, whatever the literal, exact, complete opposite of it could ever be defined as, to be more specific.

If someone asked Penny, and they have, she’d say no, it wasn't. “It was Googling the timetable for obtaining a restraining order followed by a keyword search for ‘jail time’ + ‘punch’ and ‘justified’ at first sight,” more like.

But it's still pretty romantic, if you asked her.

### 

Penny worked her ass off for this position and she’ll be damned if a pencil pushing bureaucrat will just walk in and undo all the work she’d put in.

### 

When Penny was a young girl, she got a pair of pom-poms for Christmas. Her brother got a pigskin. If she were asked to give it an approximate starting point, that’s probably the best she could do.

### 

Her father bet on the wrong horse, her nana used to say, tapping her nose with her finger, her crochet needles paused seemingly to allow for prolonged eye twinkling.

The boys would spend Sundays going over potential plays and practicing so that her brother might one day make the high school team. Huskers were all-state three years running so that was a fool’s hope. She would sit and watch them out the window of her room, watch her brother feign interest so her dad didn’t get on him for not applying himself fully, and run back and forth against a backdrop of corn stalks and hay bales.

“You know if you asked him, he’d probably let you join in,” her mother always said, which only made things worse.

Penny didn’t like having to ask for permission for anything. 

She’d let them have Sunday. She took the rest of the days in the week. 

When she was in her freshman year, she wrote a letter to the head coach of the Kansas City Chiefs and requested a copy of their playbook. 

It was months later when she did actually hear back, having temporarily forgotten, PSATs and mid-terms collided into an all-consuming distraction.

She received a copy of Marty Schottenheimer’s playbook and a signed letter stating that if he weren’t on his way out the door, he might think twice about sending this off to random underappreciated high school girls. He closed the letter telling her to “give ‘em hell, kid” and so, considering how kind and magnanimous the gesture, how could she not?

### 

There’s a version of all of this where she didn’t go with her Mom to the new Fareway opening and she didn’t get wider variation on snack food assortment than their neighborhood grocery did and they didn’t stop at the gas station down the street and never ran into Joe Montana filling his car’s tank.

Because of course Joe Montana still pumps his own gas. 

Penny wasn't much of a football fan at that point, being only a third grader, but you’d have to be the devil incarnate to grow up in the Midwest and not know who Joe Montana was. 

So she walked over and shook his hand, politely, and got his autograph on a box of Cracker Jacks. Which her father might not have slightly resented her for proudly displaying, flattened and framed in her bedroom, while he'd been “too busy” playing ball with her brother to come for the ride.

Maybe in that universe she would’ve gotten those pom-poms and not been motivated to burn them in the warm yuletide fire off to the right of where they sat at the tree. Maybe then, Joe Montana would’ve gotten in and out of that gas station without being bothered. Maybe a lot of things. 

In this life, Penny knew one thing and one thing only, she might not have the build for a football player, but she was sure as hell not going to take “cheerleader” as the only answer to “Daddy, what position can I play?”

### 

Coach, as she’s known to most of the people in Dillon, didn’t have time for his bullshit. There was a rash of hazing going on in the college leagues and people were whispering that this meant all players were mean and abusive and bullies.

Penny smiled to herself and tried to imagine any of her boys trying to get away with that. 

The state official came down wearing long khaki pants on an eight-three degree day with three different clipboards. He berated her regulation adherence and criticized the way the field is set up even though they’re just running wind sprints. When she explained to him that she was only doing this so that the length was cut in half and there was less chance on potential dehydration in the hot sun, he didn't appear to even be listening. 

“If you could give me a moment, I’ll need to take soil samples and speak with each member of the team individually to get a better idea of your failings as a coach.”

It was out of her hands, really.

### 

He came back the following day with only two clipboards and a much more skittish approach. If she didn’t love her job as much as she did, she probably would have punched him. Ten months upstate and few sprained fingers would’ve been worth it.

This time he asked more politely and made sure to emphasize the paperwork from the state of Texas that specified the things he was required to do. Interviewing players being his primary reason for being there in the first place.

### 

She had her father’s stubbornness, she knew it, but it didn’t make it any less difficult to admit. It was a vicious cycle.

When Dr. Cooper came into her office during the end of the second day of interviewing, the news he brought was hardly what she’d expected to hear from him. 

“One of your students is severely depressed,” he said.

“Excuse me?” Penny replied, caught off-guard.

“I’m not at liberty to divulge the name of the student, but I would definitely like to recommend all students continue to see a school therapist so that they can get the help they need.”

“Oh, hell, he won’t do anything.” Penny pinched the bridge of her nose and begrudgingly put aside the playbook she’d been flipping through before the interruption. 

“Just tell me who, I’ll see that they get help.”

Dr. Cooper shuffled aside, uncomfortably, clearly threatened by her still. She grinned. “I take my role as a professional confidant very seriously, Coach. I think it’s best if you just give me the information for the school counselor and I’ll be sure to pass along my findings with them.”

“Depressed? Depressed how?” Penny leaned back, her fingers laced behind her head hoping the following would be a bunch of malarkey that she could turn around and throw back in this idiot’s face.

Dr. Cooper hesitated for another few seconds before pushing on. “I believe they show a number of at risk personality traits that could pose as the kind of self-destructive behavior that leads to serious self-harm. They are deeply upset and without some sort of clinical intervention I fear for their mental health, going forward.”

Penny cracked her gum. “Shit.”

Dr. Cooper flinched a bit.

“And you really won’t tell me who?” she asked again, looking very concerned.

“I’m ethically obligated not to,” he responded, succinctly.

There was a long, empty silence in the room. Then, he spoke again.

“Why are you so concerned with your school counselor? Shouldn’t that be their primary skill set? To handle situations like these?”

Penny has sat back up in her chair by now and tried to downplay her earlier statement by busying herself with straightening her desk some. “The guy they got doing the job now is nice enough, but he’s the superintendent’s nephew. Doesn’t really have the knack for the subject matter, if you ask me. I think his background is in communication, though, so somehow he qualified.”

Dr. Cooper looked really perturbed now. He took a seat on one of the chairs facing Penny’s desk. 

“Coach, I understand that you want these boys to do well. I want the same. The reason I agreed to take this job is because I was worried about the welfare of the students moving on to state schools through our public school system, without anyone stepping in who knows how long the problem will persist.”

Penny knew he was right and although her stubborn nature made it hard to admit, once she’d done so, it was all she could do not to grovel. In turn it made her even more annoyed at this weirdo for bringing that out in her in the first place. 

The only thing worse than feeling inferior was being inferior and in this case it seemed to be she was unequivocally the latter. 

She wrote down the counselor’s information and gave it over to Dr. Cooper. He left shortly thereafter and Penny went back to business. She couldn’t shake the feeling of self-doubt through the rest of the day.

### 

Later the following day, Dr. Cooper resurfaced in her office, more irate than she’d seen him in the entire time that he’d been visiting. She motioned for the seat in front of her desk for him to sit in, but he was so upset that he either didn’t notice or needed to remain standing.

“He’ll be gone within the week,” Dr. Cooper said, not mincing words.

Penny is caught completely off-guard. If he had that kind of power, she probably should have been better to him when he first arrived. As it stood, she couldn’t do more than gape back at him in shock. She’d been saying as much for years, but to no avail.

“He asked me who my favorite Rascal Flatt was,” he said.

Penny grinned and chuckled. “And who was your answer?”

“No one was my answer! I asked him what that had to do with his method of adolescent psychology and he said, ‘Everything.’”

Penny frowned. “Everything?”

Dr. Cooper frowned back at her. “Everything.”

She smiled a crazy, unnerved smile not sure what to make of any of it. “What does that even mean?”

“I’d tell you but when I pushed him on the subject, he only kept quoting what I presume to be lyrics back to me. The whole experience was fairly traumatizing. I wish there were someone here I could speak to about it, but it seems as though your only therapist is the furthest possible thing from a qualified professional.”

“Well, you’re talking to me. So, you’ll be fine,” Penny answered, cheerily.

“I am. Yes,” Dr. Cooper responded. He looked anxious all of a sudden, which was not much an expression she’d seen on his face for the time that he’d been on campus. All three or four days.

“Something else you wanted to talk about?” she asked.

He did not stop looking unsettled, but continued on. “Do you have any recommendations on where to eat? I’ve had pizza three days in a row because it’s a safe bet for dinner, it’s hard to mess up a pizza, but I’m growing a bit tired of it.”

Penny glanced down at her watch and back at him, sizing him up for a moment more before answering. “I could use a beer. Do you want to grab a beer?”

He flinched for a second but agreed and they walked to their cars together, hers much closer to the entrance, and she told him to follow her lead.

### 

They go to her local spot, not because she wanted to see him squirm even more than he was already bringing him further into her territory, but because she really could do with their mozzarella sticks after the day she’d had.

“So where are you from?” she asked, flatly, while he cringed at their menu.

“Texas,” he supplied like it was obvious, who else is from anywhere else. “Are you sure this place is clean? Has it been investigated by the board of health recently?” 

He rubbed at the worn plastic of the menu and squinted to see what the contents read. 

“Keep your voice down,” she hushed, angrily. She peeked over to where he’s trying to read. “Which are you looking at?”

“Number five. It says bacon something, but I can’t quite—”

“Bacon wrapped hot dog with a side of pulled pork chili. They’ve taken to just calling the Triple Bypass.”

Dr. Cooper balked at her and made an odd face at the menu. “That’s just crass.”

“What would your mother think?” Penny said back to him with a smirk.

“Indeed,” he supplied, seriously. 

By the time the waitress has come back with their drinks and has taken the orders, he seemed to have grown a tad bit more comfortable with the place. If only based on her familiarity with it. 

“So, where in Texas?” 

“East Galveston. You?” 

“North Platte.”

“Nebraska?” He looks surprised.

She ignored his intrigued tone because she can’t get over his short but fascinating relationship with his beer bottle. He’d ordered the same thing she did, but casually seemed to be feigning drinking on and off for the whole of the time he’d had it. 

“Something wrong with that beer?”

He’d been better than the past few days but he still had this air of superiority about him that might have just been good posture. If he had something wrong with the Southern Stars, he should speak his mind. First the menus, then the beer, she was beginning to lose her cool.

“I don’t drink,” he said in response finally giving up the act and setting the bottle down. “But I didn’t want to offend you further.”

She should let him off the hook or apologize for being so demanding, but that’s not how you get to be head coach of one of the best high school football teams in the state when you’re five six and blonde. Instead, she nodded, respectfully and waited for their food to come.

During the silence, more than a few parents and random Dillon residents came through the entrance and nodded or greeted her cheerfully from across the room.

It hadn’t been easy. Perhaps her father’s greatest gift to her had been his reservations about her abilities to pursue this career. It was the only thing that could’ve prepared her for the initial blowback from the community upon her hiring. But she was still here and old white guy parents had stopped buying her flowers every time they won a game, so she thought that was progress.

“It must be hard to be a woman in a man’s game,” Dr. Cooper said, not unkindly.

It still made her bristle. “Just because the players are men doesn’t make it their game. My boys are good but there’s a reason why they were losing before me and a reason why they’ll likely lose if I’m gone again.”

“So you’re the strongest part of the team?” He asked this seriously, or else she might’ve smacked him.

“No you’re answering your own question there. We’re a team. I’m strong because they’re strong and same goes for the other way around.”

Their food came, then, and the subject was temporarily set aside. Despite his prickly personality, it seemed that he was indeed from East Texas because he tore into a half rack of ribs in a way her own mother would be proud of, not leaving anything left but the bone.

### 

“It’s been a while since I’ve been back down this south, I forgot how risky some of the dirt road driving was,” he said with a panicked look.

Penny shrugged because she’d already gotten three of the lug nuts off while he was making his first speech about road safety. Now, he’d moved on to accepting the blame and readjusting his sunglasses to keep the whipped up soil from getting in his eyes.

If she didn’t know better, with the sunglasses on and the plaid dress shirt and skinny legs of yet another pair of khakis, he’d actually be something resembling a looker. Instead of standing there and playing the part, he kept at her with driving statistics and pointing to the relevant pages of his rental car’s driving manual.

She had the spare on while this was going on, but probably could’ve done it in half the time with a little less distraction.

“My nana would never believe that a boy from Texas couldn’t change his own tire,” she said, later, when they were waiting at the gas station for a plug for his tire’s hole. 

“Yes, well. Mine as well,” he agreed. “I could’ve done it if I’d followed along with the manual, but I’ve never had a flat before so I’d never put the general knowledge to any practical use.”

“You’ve never had a single flat?” She was genuinely pretty shocked by this. He had to be pushing thirty, so that was really quite the feat. “Never?”

“Nope, not ever. I don’t drive much when I’m at home and when I do, which is primarily unavoidable and done for work, I make sure to be quite stringent about the maintenance check-ups.”

“Not even out with friend’s, in someone else’s less looked over car? I can’t even count the amount we went off-roading and had to flip on a spare, back in high school.”

He looked away. “No, I never did that.”

“Never went off-roading or never went out with friends?” she joked.

“Yes, that,” he answered, reservedly. 

The air crackled and another windy gust picked up more dirt from across the way and pushed it across the parking lot. She covered her eyes, even over her own set of sunglasses, and brushed some of her whipped round hair from her face. 

“Well, we’ll have to see what we can do about that.”

### 

Panthers go 3-0 for the month of October and Penny stopped asking when the string bean was due to leave. She figured he’d leave when he’s good and ready.

And he was getting there.

### 

On the first of the next month, she stopped off at her wide receiver’s house with Cooper. After being force fed cookies by his grandma and older sister, Penny was shown to the shed where his three ATVs were locked away. He showed them the basics of the controls and then it was up to them to drive them up a couple of slats into the back of Penny’s pick-up.

Cooper hesitated on the acceleration and slipped back down backward two separate times. She hoped this wasn’t a sign of how things would be going later on.

They drive to an open field and Penny assured him that she was fine to drive both off her truck, so as not to prolong the exercise any more than before. 

“This looks like deathtrap,” he said, eyeing the wide tires and the helmet he was meant to wear.

“Well, I’m not screwing with my truck’s suspension, so this is our best bet.”

She headed off the small alcove where the road began and took off across the flat, dirt-covered plateau. She paused for a second and watched as he tried to follow suit. His ATV skitted forward a few times, like a drunken frog before it seemed to stall. Or he killed the engine. She doubled back to see what the problem was.

“What’s going on?”

“I’m terrible at this, I’m sorry. I don’t want to get you in trouble when I inevitably break this vehicle.”

“God no wonder you had no friends,” she said, frankly. “Get on the back of mine.”

“What?” 

“Just get on. I won’t go fast, we’ll be fine. This is supposed to be fun. You watching me off-road is not fun. Just get on.”

He looked nervous, still, but tried to tuck his lanky form into the back of her ATV as best he could. He glanced around for a place to put his hands and settled on a black bar behind where the seat ended. It looked hardly comfortable, but she was sick of waiting around and wanted to get back to driving already.

They’d barely been moving for more than a few seconds before the physics pull him closer to her back. The body of the four by four is built similar to a motorcycle so when they start moving he slid down back and his helmet knocked into the back of hers, but she pretended not to notice.

They hit a bump after a minute of weaving in random patterns and his hands flew to grip around her waist. She did a few donuts and let out a loud scream into her helmet.

When they double back to return to the truck, she made a figure eight and although the noise of the engine drowned out most sound besides her own yells of excitement, she was nearly certain she heard him shout out, too.

They go back to her bar, both covered in more dirt than normal, and this time when he ordered a beer, he took a couple genuine sips from it.

### 

She was called into the principal’s office a month down the line. He asked her some probing questions about Cooper’s intentions and what she thought of the state of the team.

“What’s this about, exactly? Is there something you’re not telling me?”

A huge stack of paper, easily almost a hundred pages long, is plopped onto the desk between them. “This is what Dr. Cooper has been compiling during his time here. I haven’t read all of it, yet, but there’s a whole section titled something like “lack of available resources” and I’m not looking forward to finding out what he’s referring to.”

Penny’s stomach dropped and her face fell. She grabbed the report and walked straight out of the room, despite the principal’s protest.

She continued down the hall until she found the makeshift office that Cooper had been operating out of, the former counselor’s office which had yet to be replaced, and threw open the door. 

“Coach, you’re early,” he said, confused while checking the time on the wall. “I didn’t think you wanted to meet for lunch until closer to fifth period? Don’t you have a game today?”

She ignored his comments and instead tossed the report aggressively at his desk where it landed with a loud thump on top of whatever paperwork he’d been previously working on.

“What the hell is this?” she growled out.

He looked down, seeming confused at how she’d even gotten a hold of a copy and then back up at her livid facial expression, then at anywhere in the room. “You know what I was brought here to do.”

“You were brought here to dismantle my football team and destroy our chance at getting to state finals? If they boot me off the team, which it seems like that garbage might be implying is the best course of action, that will seriously endanger these boy’s future.”

Cooper held up a hand, trying to backtrack. “Now, hold on. Firstly, not playing football isn’t the end of the world, second—” he began saying.

She interrupted him by kicking his desk. His iced tea sloshed in its glass and he frantically threw a piece of scrap paper next to where some had trickled out the side to prevent it from leaking further into his paperwork. He glared at her.

“Bullshit. You don’t know their lives. For some of these boys, this is their only chance to get to college. You think I’m going to let you come in here and jeopardize their one shot because you think they might be better off with someone else? Maybe they would be, but I can’t be sure. I need to know that someone else is going to fight for them the way that I do and there’s just no way to know if that’ll ever happen if I’m replaced. So I’m all you’ve got and if you try and get me kicked out, I will dig my heels in and fight you with all I’ve got.”

“That’s not what I—” he tried to explain.

“And another thing, I thought I was being nice to you. You came in with this sob story about not having friends and being unsure about your daddy just like me and maybe I relate to getting so caught up in your work that you forget to take some time for yourself, but if you think you can just make a fool of me and for me to roll over and let you humiliate me on and off the field, you’ve got another thing coming.”

“Coach—” he said, voice wavering.

“If this is how you treat friends, then maybe you were better off not having any.”

There was an echoing silence to the small office, then. “Penny,” he started one last time.

“Don’t you ever speak to me again,” she said with a ferocity that made him physically shut his gaping mouth and look down at floor.

She walked away. He didn’t follow her.

### 

Another few weeks passed and now that Cooper was gone, the superintendent pulled some strings and got his nephew back into the vacant counselor’s job. Penny tried to tell herself that she’d been exaggerating how terrible he was, before, since that report had likely painted them all in poor light and so no one deserved to be thrown aside.

It was not until the Thanksgiving party that she found out exactly how pigheaded she’d been about the whole thing. The counselor buddied up to her at the punch bowl and smiled. 

“Thanks for making sure that state inspection flunkie got taken out,” he said, grinning.

“What?” Penny asked, genuinely caught off-guard.

“I know that he was annoying a couple of the higher ups with all the requirements and rigmarole, but they figured if you hated him than he must really be bad news. Or else I might’ve had to stay gone, you know?”

“No, I don’t know. Please explain what you’re tap dancing around,” Penny ground out, setting her drink down.

The man looked around worried that the expression on her face meant there was about to be a scene. Everyone here attended the ball games. They knew her temper fairly well, even if they hadn’t ever had it directed at them.

“Well you guys were buddies, of course. Plus he was all head over heels for your program in all of that boring report, I mean, you would’ve probably been the only person to remain a fan of his after reading it, but since you weren’t, they took what you had to say about him pretty seriously. Hence why he only stayed, what, all of two days after that whole mess hit the fan.”

Penny closed her eyes and rolled her neck, because of course that’s what happened. Of course she didn’t bother to read the stupid report because she was so mad at him. Of course he got run out of town like she would’ve if Principal Gablehouser didn’t trust in her judgment, didn’t fight for her to stay there. 

Her father used to bet on the wrong horse, her nana would say. But unfortunately, this time, so did Cooper.

### 

She made a beeline for Gablehouser and tried to explain the situation but he was already pretty trashed on the Wild Turkey spiked HI-C. So, she settled for leaving early and making a few uncomfortable phone calls. All of which went right to voicemail.

It was the holidays, though. So she hoped he was just holed up in Galveston for the break and couldn’t return her messages for that reason. 

She spent her entire flight to Nebraska reading the report he’d written, commending her coaching and highlighting her talents as one of the only things preventing these students from slipping through the cracks and becoming the kind of people that other high schools in the area were unfortunately prone to allowing. 

The rest of the eighty some pages were focused on a massive overhaul of the guidance and therapy that the students were getting. It was not that he found them particularly troubled, although there were obviously some exceptions. He noted that these students were playing at one of the premiere schools for football in the entire state and were experiencing an undo amount of pressure to succeed on and off the field because of this. 

It had always occurred to Penny that they needed someone that was involved in the team politics as they were the entire high school’s well-being, but as it stood, the only person they had on the job seemed about as interested in either as he was in bands that weren’t Rascal Flatts. 

That is, not very.

Finding this all out, so far after the fact, was making her feel even worse for wear about how the situation had played out. Her shooting him down and freezing him out played to the higher-ups like she was agreeing with their decision to not honor his findings and to proceed, business as usual. This was especially difficult to come to terms with when she was reading this packet of detailed information on how to better the school, knowing that it was already rejected and near impossible to breathe life back into.

### 

She’d not heard from Cooper at all, even after Thanksgiving, so she continued on trying to change things to go along with his report even if he wasn’t there to help her defend them.

The school felt a lot more like it did when she’d first come to town, giving her dirty looks, and generally not enjoying being told that things were broke and needed fixing.

Little by little, she forced her players to encourage one another to talk to her, even if the school therapist was a wash, so that they knew they could find someone to confide in. Every once in a while someone would say something about being overwhelmed with classwork and she’d help them through it even though most of the time it seemed like they were hoping she’d write them a note to get out of another math test.

They made the playoffs at the start of December and even though she was not sure if that’s a sign that things were working so much as proof that the team could and would overcome anything.

She wrote him a letter explaining her side of things and apologizing for her outburst, but assuring him she only did so because she’d been led to believe that he was trying to take her position from her. There was not much she wouldn’t do for her job and on some level she’s okay with however many friendships it spoiled. Anyone she could ever truly trust or ever genuinely get along with would know better that football is her passion and the reaction she had was only further evidence of that.

She had to look up his name online to find his address and found out more about him from his online profile than she had in her whole time knowing him. He had three degrees, one in statistics, one in psychology, and a doctorate in behavioral science. He lived in an apartment in the city near the state department, where he worked as a consultant on child welfare and mental health. All the sort of stuff she knew about him were things like he preferred dark meat, called his Mom on Sundays to check in, and liked to see movies during the day since it was cheaper and less crowded.

She wrote down his address and mailed the letter that evening.

### 

She had to help organize a massive trip up to Dallas for the championship game and tried not to let it disrupt her ability to focus on doing her best job coaching.

Cooper had this thing where he used to tell her to make a list of things so that when she did them she could cross them off. It made it less overwhelming to visualize what needed to be done and every time you crossed something off then you had a physical representation of progress. 

It was a trick he used when counseling students to help consolidate their homework to budget time. It was also apparently quite handy when it came to grocery shopping, but that seemed a bit obvious, even though she remembered just nodding and agreeing with a smile.

When they got to the city, she took a long shower to relax herself their first night in the hotel. AT&T Stadium was visible even from the window of her hotel and she used the hotel room’s complimentary pen to write and cross off “booze” on a complimentary notepad.

She hit up the mini-bar and ate the eight dollar overcharge for the mini bottle of whisky. When in Dallas, live like the Cowboys do. She cringed thinking about it, but despite remaining a die-hard Chiefs fan, there were some things you just never shared with people when you made your living coaching football in Texas. Hating the Cowboys were numbers one through five on that list.

She put the stress out of her head and tried to get herself ready for bed since she had a long day ahead of her.

### 

When they win, and they do win, Penny doesn’t think about Cooper. She doesn’t think about her dad. She had a long, serious block of just being proud of her team and herself.

There were all sorts of interviews and follow-ups about the third quarter interception and the two point conversion when they were down by four being the biggest risk and reward of the entire game. She smiled and answered again and again that she doesn’t think the conversation should even be about her being a woman so much as this team being as good as it is. The reporters look annoyed at her abrasiveness, but she shrugged it off because they weren’t the ones who’d won a state championship during after only five years at the school. 

The crowd thinned out eventually and she had a long, meaningful conversation with her boys about the importance of being humble before such a victory and knowing that this is a reward for hard work, not an excuse to coast next year. Then a promise to the seniors that wouldn’t be rejoining the team next fall that they should be sure to bring honor to their time at Dillon by representing themselves, whether on the college team or not, as fine young gentlemen of Texas. The kind her nana would think fixed flat tires and knew how important a good rack of ribs was.

Some of the boys started to give her odd looks towards the end of her speech, but for the most part they nodded and smiled. Several of them cried and it made her insides melt that no one even dared to acknowledge that as some sign of weakness it might be considered lesser teams. The ones where the hazing happened and the bad seeds were sprouted.

She made a difference here and it was palpable. She shook everyone’s hand and watched as they all touched their makeshift Panthers P that was taped to the wall next to the entrance of the locker room. The chaperones were already helping to cart off students to the hotel by the busload, a waffles and ice cream party their plans for the rest of the evening.

She stepped back onto the gridiron one last time before she herself would follow the team back in her rental car and closed her eyes. For a second she allowed herself the image of her coaching college football or even some day the pros. 

Again, hopefully not coaching of the Cowboys, but still beggars couldn’t be choosers. 

It’s during her moment of meditation before the still lit up, still electric feeling stadium that she felt that familiar feeling of someone watching you.

Her eyes shoot open and she scanned around the near-empty stadium for the source.

She looked for only a few seconds before head stopped, turned to the right, near the ten yard line opposite her side, leaned against the edge, stood that khaki pants wearing, goon faced idiot.

She was immediately aware of the inability to reach him without going all the way inside up three flights of stairs and needing all kinds of escorts to get her through the doors. Sure, she was the head coach of the winning team, but the people that worked here didn’t know her from Adam. Or Eve, she should say.

She made the probably unwise and completely cliché decision then that she would just cross the field. It seemed to register to him since he very, very ungraciously attempted to make his way over the gated side and slip down below. There was a moment as she jogged towards him that she thought he might’ve broken something on the fall, she almost laughed on instinct at the sight, but he was back up and climbing up over the remaining divider after a few seconds below. 

It was a good thing he was tall or he’d have never been able to reach.

When they meet, not quite in the middle of the field, so as not to be something out of a romantic comedy, she stopped and made him come the remaining fifty feet toward her.

He walked up, slightly winded, and she crossed her arms.

She’d definitely been in the wrong prior to the reading of what he’d written, but he’s the one that ignored her for the month or two following that and although she was happy to see him, she still needed a concrete explanation as to what the hell exactly that had been about.

He panted a bit more, turning around to take in the fact that they were standing on the field and somehow weren’t tackled or escorted out of the stadium in cuffs. At least not yet.

“Hello,” he said, slowly regaining his composure.

“Hi.”

“I’m sorry I never wrote you back, it was complicated.”

“What was complicated?” she asked, seriously.

“The situation and what I was able to do to rectify it.”

“How so?” 

He gave up his pretense of trying to come across as confident and immediately she knew she was about to find out the real reason, based on his defeated posture alone.

“My meemaw was there when I first got your messages. I had been telling her about you and the work you do and the first thing she said to me was that I should leave you alone so as not to distract you from this because you might never forgive me for it. Making a woman choose between her passion and her friendship is a sure sign of ignorance, is what she said, exactly.”

Penny was annoyed, a little, but the sentiment was there. When she didn’t answer, he continued.

“Then I told her about the letter when it came and she said that if I did anything to interfere with you she would die of embarrassment and then haunt me until I died, too.”

Penny couldn’t help but laugh at the phrasing. “Oh, my god.”

“Yes, she doesn’t mince words. Something she’s told me to respect in a good woman.”

Penny nodded.

“So, Coach,” he cleared his throat before continuing. “Penny. I’m sorry.”

“I’m sorry, too, for not listening the first time. I should’ve trusted you, even though I still don’t know you that well, I consider you a friend.”

He smiled and put his hands in his pockets. She suddenly then realized that he was wearing a Panthers jersey, something that had begun to look kind of invisible lately, given the amount of people wearing their gear in the crowd tonight. 

Somehow the idea of him wearing that instead of one of his stuffy button ups, the process he had gone through to purchase it and put it on and buy tickets and having come to cheer them on somewhere in the stands, then waiting there hoping she’d somehow come back alone; it all tickled her and she couldn’t help but let out a short burst of laughter.

He squinted back at her, not sure what it was about, but simply continued to grin.

The pair fell into step as they walked off the field towards the locker room exit that Penny had initially stepped out from. 

“You know I got that school counselor fired again, even though it almost cost me my job.”

“Ah, yes. He and his uncle nearly cost me mine. They made quite a fuss about my time there being pointless. Although, as I know you came to read in the report, I disagreed.”

“You didn’t really get fired because of that, right?”

“No,” he said, quietly.

“Well, since you’ve got experience in the area, if you have any suggestions on who to hire maybe you could take a look at some resumes and tell me who would be best qualified. So we don’t run into that again. I know the boys certainly liked having someone they could trust around and I’m sure they could use someone similar in the future.”

Cooper nodded.

### 

They said their goodbyes and hugged, the following day after brunch, when it was time for her to travel back down to Dillon and begin preparing for spring.

She promised to write and he promised to respond, this time.

### 

She was home for Christmas break, but couldn’t wait to get back to school the following week, after New Year’s. Her family was proud, but sometimes it felt suffocating, to be with people who seemed so blown away by her achievements.

It was an unfair thing to hold against them, she knew, which is part of why she needed to get back, but it also hurt to think that they were constantly underestimating her still even after all this time.

When she arrived on campus that first Monday back, she’s the second car in the parking lot.

She turned on the lights in her office and booted up her computer for the first time in a few weeks. She walked down the hall to the faculty office to put on a fresh pot of coffee. 

The lights in there were already on.

She opened the door expecting to see one of the administration or janitorial crew, but instead was shocked to find Dr. Cooper standing before the refrigerator, tsking at the spoiled contents.

“Penny,” he exclaimed, somehow equally surprised to see her. She was the one who worked here, not him. “It’s great to see you!”

“What are you doing here?” she asked, dumbstruck.

He smiled and shut the refrigerator with a smirk. “You told me to find you the most qualified person to fill the position. So I did.”

“Oh, where are they?” 

“Right here,” he said, matter-of-factly.

“You?” 

“Yes, I hold degrees in the area and all I had to do was take a quick certification exam over the break.” He grinned like a little kid. “Aced it.”

“You’re going to be our school’s new counselor?”

“I was growing tired of my previous position and I had such a nice time here before, I thought I would make an excellent addition to your staff. I emailed your principal and although it took some cajoling, he couldn’t disagree that I certainly had the qualifications fit for the position.”

“I—I—” Penny mumbled to herself, then trailed off. “Why?”

“I enjoy working with you,” he answered, honest.

There was a heavy unasked follow-up to that, but the surprise was still enough that Penny was already too overwhelmed to pop that bubble, too.

“Oh, I almost forgot. I have a present for you, for Christmas.”

She blanched, she hadn’t bought him anything. She didn’t think she’d be seeing him until maybe summer or at least spring break. “Oh, I didn’t get you anything. I’m sorry, you keep it you didn’t have to do that.”

“No, it’s as much a congratulatory present as it was for the holidays. Besides, Meemaw said that you earned something special since I was already putting you off by not writing you back, then surprising you in Dallas, and now following you here.”

Penny didn’t know at all what to say in response to that.

“Open it!” He beamed at her as he retrieved a very stereotypical looking wrapped box from where it sat next to his discarded messenger bag.

She scratched her head and tore at the paper. There was a split second when she first opened the box where she almost got mad, but then forgot that she never told him that story about her Dad and Christmas and he didn’t do it on purpose. Then it passed, ever so quickly.

“Pom-poms?” Penny said back at him, looking at two very crammed together pom-poms, blue yellow and white, in the box below. 

“Those are mine, I just needed something to wrap the real present in and those seemed pretty prefect, so I couldn’t pass it up. It was old habit, we used to do that with spirit boxes when I was in school.”

Something clicked, deep in the dark recesses of her brain. “You were a cheerleader?”

“I was. Well, _am_ , I suppose.” Cooper responded, seriously. “It’s a calling not a job.”

Before she could continue, she had to let her jaw drop and her brain to let it sink in. It should’ve occurred to her before, that he loved football but clearly had never played, that he seemed to innately understand her position on the sidelines being so important, that he was fit but also too lean to play contact sports. 

He wanted players to be better version of themselves and he pursued athletics out of all the specializations, to focus his previous career regulating. He “followed” (his words) her down here to work with her, the best coach in the state. He was the best cheerleader in the state. 

She pushed aside the monumental shock and took the pom-poms out of the box. 

There sat a football.

She furrowed her brow and looked up at him to ask the meaning. 

“This is the game ball from your first championship win.”

“Coop—”

“I already checked with your team. They want you to have it. To display it here, at the school.”

She grinned because her boys were really the best in the state, on paper and in her heart.

“Thank you.”

“Ah, ah, ah, Coach. I have a humble request of you, consider it my consolation gift.”

She made a face at his terrible attempt passing a rehearsed response as impromptu. But then he went to his bag and pulled out a box of Cracker Jacks. Oh, right. She had told him this one.

“Can I have your autograph please? I want to let it age gracefully so that I can sell it on eBay when I’m old and gray and it’s worth a great deal of money.”

She smiled so brightly, her eyes pricked with reluctant tears. She signed it delicately in the same place Joe Montana signed hers and handed it back over. 

He held it and admired the bright silver signature. “My nest egg,” he said seriously, like he believed it, deep down, even though this was merely a joke.

“Thank you, Sheldon,” she said, humbly. “I don’t think you know how much this means to me.”

She looked down at the ball and tried to keep her eyes from welling back up again. 

“Trust me,” he said, dropping his earlier goofiness. “I do.”

She was sure she hadn’t told him that story, which she never repeated to anyone and was known only to her immediately family who had been there that day, but the look in his eyes. Somehow he did know, whether it’s because he knew her that well or maybe he had the same thing happen, being a cheerleader and not a player himself. 

It was as though he was speaking a foreign language that she’d thought she’d made up herself until just then. She reached up and pulled him into a tight hug.

### 

Cooper did bring his pom-poms to some of the home games, but Penny could not handle the sight of him trying to match the cheerleaders’ motions from his spot in the stands. So she keeps her back to him for as long as possible every Friday night.

It’s not that it’s embarrassing, far from it, it’s too darn cute. 

When they win for the first time in three games, he insisted that they go their spot for beer and ribs. She’d earned that night to celebrate, he explained. 

They’re both great at their jobs, but everyone needed a change of scenery for a night or two.

At their usual table, he still tried to wipe at the worn down menus, he still ordered the same beer as her even though he’d only ever drink half, and they still got same food. But it wasn’t another night buried in her playbooks and him reading a psychology journal before they went to bed.

The only real difference is that when people walked in they didn’t just greet Penny anymore. That took some time and getting used to, too, but eventually people warmed to him like they did her.

“So did you see the Cowboys lost to the Chiefs last night?” she asked, pretending to read the menu for the first time in years.

He sneered at her. “Is that what the yelling was about? I thought someone died on Walking Dead, or something.”

“Please, like you weren’t watching it, too.”

“I can’t watch Chiefs games with you, that’s like trying to see how long you can leave your hand near a firecracker after you light it. Sure it might not explode right there and take a finger, but you never know.”

“I’m going to ignore the part where you compared me to a firecracker like that’s a bad thing and say that I’m sure you were off crying somewhere because you didn’t want me to collect on that bet.”

“I am not letting you collect on that bet, what would Meemaw think,” Sheldon said, in a hushed and serious tone.

“Meemaw will never have to know.”

He closed his eyes and shook his head like he was praying. If he were the type who prayed.

“I told you I prefer the Texans anyway, they’re far superior a team.”

“Don’t ruin this for me. You love the Cowboys and I crush your spirit, that’s how this goes.”

“Right, sure. Oh, no. The Cowboys lost, I am devastated. How will I ever go on? Won’t someone put me out of my misery, won’t someone think of my small cowchildren, oh the humanity,” he groaned out in the most acerbic monotonous pitch he or anyone she knew could manage.

“I think they’re called calves,” Penny interjected.

His expression remained so dry that Penny thought he might accidentally fall asleep like that.

The waitress interrupted with their food. “Half rack of ribs, mozzarella sticks, and a grilled cheese.” She laid out each plate separately with a grin. “Great game tonight, Coach,” she said, spiritedly. 

“Thank you, Mandy,” Penny said with a smile, already having torn into a mozzarella stick.

“Mr. Coach,” Mandy said with a nod. Sheldon smiled back and nodded.

### 

The Chiefs blew their streak mid-season but Penny still got Sheldon to pay out the bet.

Meemaw never did find out about the terms and thank God, because she would never have forgiven him. Gambling with lives at stake, she would have been appalled.

They had a baby boy in July.


End file.
